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A Critique of Generative Class Theories of Environmentalism and of the Labour–Environmentalist Relationship

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Abstract

Relations between the labour and environmental movements are believed to be prone to conflict stemming from the different class bases of the two movements. The generative class theories of the environmental movement and the labour-environmentalist relationship (LER) implicit in this belief are examined against research on the sociology of new social movements and cases of labour-environmentalist interaction, and rejected. Nonetheless, class in a dimensional sense remains important in terms of circumscribing social actors' abilities to shape, and respond to, environmental and economic change; rejection of generative class theories of the LER should not entail espousal of an 'environmentalism without class'.